Alex Soto

Developer Advocate at IBM

Alex Soto is a Developer Advocate at IBM. He is passionate about the Java world and software automation and believes in the open-source software model. Alex is the co-author of Manning and O'Reilly books Testing Java Microservice, Quarkus Cookbook, Kubernetes Secrets Management, GitOps Cookbook, RHCE Ansible Automation Study Guide, Applied AI for Enterprise Java Development, and AI Agents with Java. A Java Champion since 2017, he is also an international speaker (Devoxx, KubeCon, DevNexus, JavaOne, JavaLand, ...) and teacher at Salle URL University. You can follow him on Twitter (@alexsotob) to stay tuned to what's happening in Java.

Andres Almiray

Seasoned Sourceror | Java Champion | Testcontainers Community Champion

Andres is a Java/Groovy developer and a Java Champion, with more than 2 decades of experience in software design and development. He has been involved in web and desktop application development since the early days of Java. Andres is a true believer in open source and has participated on popular projects like Groovy, Griffon, and DbUnit, as well as starting his own projects. Founding member of the Griffon framework and Hackergarten community event. Author of JReleaser.

Anish Tallapureddy

Principal Product Manager @ Microsoft

Anish Tallapureddy is a seasoned product leader with 16+ years driving innovation at the intersection of AI, cloud, and developer platforms. At Microsoft, he leads product management in the CoreAI group, enabling enterprises and developers to build, scale, and govern cutting-edge machine learning and generative AI solutions with confidence.

Anthony Dahanne

Software Engineer at HeroDevs

Software Developer for 15+ years, my favorite topics are containerization (Docker and Kubernetes), building tools, Continuous Integration and, of course, core Java development. Having recently joined HeroDevs, I work on patching and releasing EOL OSS Java and Spring projects. I'm also a maintainer of the Paketo Java buildpacks. In my spare time, I work on various open source projects: from Mastodon bots written in NodeJS or Go, to Android apps!

Ayan Gupta

Cloud Advocate at Microsoft | Forbes 30 Under 30 | Entrepreneur & Tech Innovator

Ayan Gupta, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, is a Cloud Advocate at Microsoft helping developers modernize Java applications and adopt cloud-native practices. Before joining Microsoft, Ayan co-founded startups focused on AI-driven solutions for social impact. Ayan has spoken at conferences including All Things Open and JDConf, delivering practical strategies for application modernization and automation.

Bazlur Rahman

Java Champion | Contributing Editor at InfoQ and Foojay.IO

A N M Bazlur Rahman is a Software Engineer with over a decade of specialized experience in Java and related technologies. His expertise has been formally recognized through the prestigious title of Java Champion. Beyond his professional commitments, Mr. Rahman is deeply involved in community outreach and education. He is the founder and current moderator of the Java User Group in Bangladesh, where he has organized educational meetups and conferences since 2013. In the past two years, Mr. Rahman has been an active speaker at various international conferences and Java user groups. His talks have often focused on specialized topics such as concurrency and virtual threads. In addition to his community work, Mr. Rahman also serves as an editor for Java Queue at InfoQ and Foojay.io, both of which are leading platforms for technology content. Notably, he has authored five books on the Java programming language in Bengali, three of which have become best sellers in Bangladesh. He is currently writing a new book with O'Reilly titled "Modern Concurrency in Java".

Brian Benz

Principal AI Advocate at Microsoft

Brian is a Principal AI Advocate at Microsoft with 12+ years of experience helping developers succeed across AI, Cloud, and open-source technologies. He specializes in building technical strategy and trusted relationships with partners including GitHub, NVIDIA, Arm, Inc., Oracle, IBM, Broadcom and Red Hat, while keeping up with competitors including AWS, Google, and emerging players like CoreWeave. Learning by teaching is one of Brian's favorite things. He currently enjoys working at the intersection of developer relations and AI enablement in the cloud at Microsoft and is always looking to demonstrate solutions for real-world challenges through advocacy, demos, and partnerships. Find him on most of the socials and GitHub at @bbenz. A current list of Brian's talks can be found at https://aka.ms/brianspeaking.

Brian Sam-Bodden

Principal Applied AI Engineer at Redis

Brian Sam-Bodden is a Principal Applied AI Engineer at Redis as well as an author, instructor, speaker, developer advocate, open-source contributor, and Java Champion who has spent over thirty years crafting software systems. He holds dual bachelor's degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University in computer science and physics and a Master's in Data Science from Harvard. Brian is a frequent speaker at user groups and conferences nationally and abroad and is the author of "Beginning POJOs", co-author of the "Enterprise Java Development on a Budget", and a contributor to O'Reilly's "97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know".

Bruno Borges

Product Manager at Microsoft

Bruno Borges is a Principal Product Manager at Microsoft, where he has led global initiatives in software development, AI, and cloud innovation. He has driven the strategy and adoption of flagship products used worldwide, helping organizations modernize critical systems and embrace new technologies responsibly. With an Executive MBA from Simon Fraser University, Bruno combines technical depth with business acumen to deliver impact at scale. A frequent keynote speaker and advisor, he is recognized for advancing innovation, shaping product strategy, and guiding leaders through the future of technology.

Cesar Hernandez

Senior Software Engineer at Tomitribe

Cesar Hernandez is a Senior Software Engineer at Tomitribe with over 14 years of experience in Enterprise Java Applications. He is a Java Champion, Duke's Choice Award winner, Oracle Ace Pro, JFrog SuperFrog, open source advocate, MicroProfile contributor, Jakarta and Apache TomEE committer, JCP associate member, teacher, and public speaker. When Cesar is away from a computer, he enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, and playing music with the Java Community Band, The Null Pointers.

Christian Tzolov

R&D Software Engineer in the Spring team at Broadcom

Christian Tzolov leads the Spring AI and MCP Java SDK projects as an R&D Software Engineer on Broadcom's Spring team. He bridges the gap between enterprise systems and AI, giving Java developers practical tools to build intelligent applications.

Cristian Schuszter

Staff Software Engineer at CERN

Dr. Cristian Schuszter holds a PhD in Systems Engineering with a focus on distributed fault-tolerant software architectures and machine-learning based failure prediction. In his day-to-day, he is somewhere between a Data and Full-stack Software Engineer, with a wide range of tech & job exposure both in academia and industry. For the past 7 years he's been working with various teams in CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). Currently he's focusing on the architectural directions of the CERN business computing group, with an emphasis on enterprise Java systems and UI.

Daniel Oh

Senior Principal Developer Advocate

Java Champion | CNCF Ambassador | Developer Advocate | Technical Marketing | Keynote Speaker | Published Author

Daniel Sol

Program Manager, Microsoft Azure Compute (AKS)

Daniel has been working with Azure since the early days and before moving to Redmond was working in the field on large IaaS and PaaS deployments ranging from startups to enterprises. Now he works as a Program Manager in the Azure Kubernetes Service team working on cloud native tooling.

Edward Burns

Principal Architect for Java on Azure, Microsoft

Ed has worked on a wide variety of client and server side web technologies since 1994, including NCSA Mosaic, Netscape 6, Mozilla, the Sun Java Plugin, Jakarta Tomcat and JavaServer Faces, and most recently, the Servlet specification. Ed has led or co-led the expert groups for Servlet and JavaServer Faces. Ed has published four books with McGraw-Hill: JavaServerFaces: The Complete Reference (2006), Secrets of the Rockstar Programmers: Riding the IT Crest (2008), JavaServer Faces 2.0: The Complete Reference (2010), and Hudson Continuous Integration In Practice (2013).

Elder Moraes

Principal Developer Advocate, IBM | Java Champion

Elder helps Java developers to build and deliver secure, available, and fast server-side applications. He is a published author of six books and a board member at SouJava, one of the biggest JUGs in the world. As a Developer Advocate, Elder shares experiences and best practices through online content and at international events like JavaOne, The Developers Conference, QCon, Oracle Code One, Campus Party, and Devnexus.

Haim Michael

Software Developer | Trainer | Consultant

Haim Michael is a software development trainer, entrepreneur, and lecturer with nearly 30 years of experience. He founded life michael (lifemichael.com), delivering professional training in Java, Python, JavaScript, Scala, Kotlin, and more. Haim has lectured at leading universities, including Bar-Ilan, HIT, Shenkar, and Technion, and has trained developers at top tech companies.

Heqing Jiang

AgentScope Java Maintainer | Apache Dubbo PMC

AgentScope Java Maintainer and Apache Dubbo PMC member. Interested in Cloud Native, AI, Micro Service and Security.

Jenny Ferries

Principal Software Engineering Manager, One Engineering Systems at Microsoft

Jenny Ferries is a Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft leading the 1ES AI-native team at Microsoft. She previously led the Entra authentication SDKs for services, validating over 7 trillion requests daily. Jenny is passionate about pioneering human-AI collaboration across the software lifecycle, helping teams adopt agentic workflows.

Jonathon Frost

Principal Technical Program Manager, Microsoft

Jonathon Frost is a Principal Technical Program Manager at Microsoft, part of the Developer Experience and Generative AI Team for Azure Database for PostgreSQL. With deep expertise in database technologies, AI/ML, and cloud computing, Jonathon drives the development of intelligent, data-driven solutions that empower businesses to harness the full potential of AI and Azure PostgreSQL. Throughout his career, Jonathon has successfully collaborated with software engineering and research teams to deliver cutting-edge features, optimize database performance, and shape strategic AI capabilities. Passionate about innovation at the intersection of AI and databases, he is dedicated to building solutions that enhance efficiency, scalability, and customer impact in the cloud.

Jonathan Vila

Staff Developer Advocate at Sonar

International Speaker, JavaChampion, Cofounder of JBCNConf and DevBcn conferences in Barcelona, and AI4Devs conference in Amsterdam. Currently working as a Staff Developer Advocate in Java at Sonar (SonarQube), focused on Code Quality, Dev Productivity, AI & Security. I have worked as a (paid) developer for more than 30 years ago using multiple languajes, but for the last 15 using Java. Although I started when I was 14 with my Amstrad CPC 6128 :) I am very interested in simulated reality, psychology, philosophy, and Java.

Josh Long

Spring Developer Advocate

Josh (@starbuxman) has been the first Spring Developer Advocate since 2010. Josh is a Java Champion, author of 7 books (including "Reactive Spring") and numerous best-selling video training (including "Building Microservices with Spring Boot Livelessons" with Spring Boot co-founder Phil Webb), and an open-source contributor (Spring Boot, Spring Integration, Axon, Spring Cloud, Activiti, Vaadin, etc), a Youtuber (Coffee + Software with Josh Long as well as my Spring Tips series), and a podcaster ("A Bootiful Podcast").

Laura Trotta

Senior Software Engineer – Elastic

Laura is a software engineer mainly focused on Java related technologies and frameworks, but is also interested in other languages, like Go and Rust. She maintains the official Java client for Elasticsearch, is an active contributor to the Spring framework (Spring AI, Spring Data, Spring Boot) and enjoys learning as much as sharing her findings with others.

Mary Grygleski

VP of Global (Western Hemisphere) – AI Collective | Technical Architect and Advocate | TEDx Speaker | Java Champion | President of Chicago JUG | Organizer of AI Collective Chicago

Mary is a Technical Solutions Architect and Advocate in the Emerging Technology area. She started as an engineer in Unix/C, then transitioned to Java around 2000 and has never looked back since then. After 20+ years of being a software engineer and technical architect, she discovered her true passion in developer and customer advocacy. Most recently she has serviced companies of various sizes such as IBM, US Cellular, Bank of America, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, in topic areas that included Java, GenAI, Streaming systems, Open source, Cloud and Distributed messaging systems. She is also a very active tech community leader outside of her day job. She is the President of the Chicago Java Users Group (CJUG), and the Chicago Organizer of the AI Collective Chicago Chapter.

Nils Hyoma

MHP – A Porsche Company

Nils Hyoma is a business informatics post-graduate from Hamburg University, a professional agile coach, and a passionate amateur water polo player. Nils studied Japanese studies, international business studies, and business informatics in Hiroshima and Hamburg. Many years as an active developer, he learned the basics of agile software development. After working in online retail / eCommerce and in IT consulting, he is now part of the coaching team at MHP - A Porsche Company since 2024. Nils supports and coaches both local and distributed, international teams and projects. Nils has been active in team sports since childhood. It also reflected team spirit in his professional life: As a coach, he forms well-established units out of developers and analysts, who can then independently develop products. The guiding principle is always the focus on customer satisfaction.

Oleg Šelajev

AI and Developer Relations at Docker | Java Champion

Oleg Šelajev is a developer advocate at Docker working on AI, developer productivity, Testcontainers. Developer. Author. Speaker. Java Champion, Microsoft MVP, Docker captain. Loves all languages.

Ricardo Ferreira

Lead, Developer Relations at Redis

Ricardo leads the developer relations team at Redis. He built a successful career in DevRel working for companies such as AWS, Elastic, and Confluent. Before DevRel, he had built deep expertise in distributed systems, databases, and data streaming over the past 20 years. Ricardo's career began with a decade-long focus on software engineering, coding with Java, and mastering development best practices. After this, he shifted his focus to solution architecture. In this role, he specialized in databases, in-memory data grids, and big data systems.

Rod Johnson

Creator of Spring & Best Selling Author of J2EE without EJB

Rod Johnson is the father of Spring, which grew out of his influential book, "Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development," which initiated the "lightweight" transformation of enterprise Java. Rod co-founded SpringSource, where he served as CEO until its 2009 acquisition by VMware, where he is now a Senior Vice President. Rod is an authority on enterprise Java architecture, a thought leader on open source development and business models, and a popular speaker at conferences around the world. Rod has over 15 years technology, management and business experience. He holds a BA with Honors in Computer Science, Mathematics and Musicology as well as a PhD from the University of Sydney.

Ron Veen

Java enthusiast and Special agent for Team Rockstars IT

Ron Veen is a seasoned software engineer with extensive experience ranging from Microservices to mainframes. His passion for software engineering and architecture has been his guiding force throughout his career. With over 20 years of expertise in the JVM and the Java ecosystem, Ron is an Oracle Certified Java Programmer (OCP) and a certified Sun Business Component Developer (SCBCD/OCPBCD). A dedicated Java enthusiast, Ron also has a keen interest in alternative JVM languages, particularly Kotlin. At Team Rockstars IT, he serves as a Special Agent and lead developer, frequently speaking at international conferences. Ron is the author of books on Java Cloud-native migrations with Jakarta EE and on Virtual Threads, Structured Concurrency, and Scoped Values. He has also co-written a book on Kotlin.

Rory Preddy

Principal Developer Advocate, Microsoft

Rory works in the Developer Relations team at Microsoft as a Principal Developer Advocate. Advocates use their deep research skills to help professional cloud developers discover and successfully use Microsoft's platforms. A seasoned speaker whose talks are both meaningful and humorous, Rory speaks around the world empowering developers to achieve more.

Rustam Mehmandarov

Senior Software Engineer, SpareBank 1 Utvikling

Passionate computer scientist. Java Champion, Google Developer Expert for Cloud, Docker Captain, and Oracle Ace Pro. JavaOne Rock Star. Public speaker. Community builder.

Sandra Ahlgrimm

Senior Cloud Advocate, Microsoft

Sandra Ahlgrimm is a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, specializing in open-source technologies and Java. She previously worked at Axel Springer companies, gaining deep experience in coding and DevOps at scale. This expertise helped her establish automated infrastructure, DevOps pipelines, and agile practices at a startup. In her first year at Microsoft, she supported enterprises with Kubernetes, DevOps, and agile transformation. For the past five years, she has focused on advocating for cloud-native Java and open-source development.

Savi Grover

NBC, Software Quality Assurance Engineer

Results oriented software quality engineer with 10 years of experience of successfully building, testing, deploying Mobile/Web apps, strategically providing technological solutions in diverse lines of businesses. Have experience in test release processes with action-oriented automation test setups – using programming languages like Java, Python along with automation tools, exercising end-to-end smoke, integration and regression functional tests. Currently working in enhancing process optimizations and Gen AI testing using MS Copilot and internal LLMs.

Sean Li

Product Manager

Sean Li is a product manager from the Core AI team at Microsoft. In his role, Sean led initiatives that created GitHub Copilot app modernization, Java on Azure Container Apps, and Spring Integration with Azure services. He enjoys blogging, speaking, and sharing new technologies that may help others.

Simon Ritter

Deputy CTO, talking Java around the world

Simon Ritter is the Deputy CTO of Azul Systems. Simon has been in the IT business since 1984 and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Brunel University in the U.K. Simon joined Sun Microsystems in 1996 and started working with Java technology from JDK 1.0; he has spent time working in both Java development and consultancy. Having moved to Oracle as part of the Sun acquisition, he managed the Java Evangelism team for the core Java platform, Java for client applications and embedded Java. Now at Azul, he continues to help people understand Java as well as Azul's JVM technologies and products. Simon has twice been awarded Java Rockstar status at JavaOne and is a Java Champion. He currently represents Azul on the JCP Executive Committee and on the Java SE Expert Group (JSR 379, 383 and 384).

Yoshio Terada

Senior Cloud Advocate, Microsoft

Yoshio Terada is a Senior Cloud Advocate at Microsoft, specializing in Java on Azure and Kubernetes. With over a decade as a Java evangelist, he has promoted cloud-native microservices architectures worldwide. In 2013, he was recognized by NIKKEI as one of "100 professionals energizing the world." Yoshio has served as a board member of the Japanese Java Users Group and became an Oracle Java Champion in 2016. He is dedicated to fostering Java adoption in cloud and enterprise solutions.